So. Christmas.

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 7.236% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

I’ve been texting a lot of people on Christmas – hi! Hello! Miss you, Merry Christmas!
And what I’ve gotten back a few times is, “I am getting soooooo drunk to deal with my relatives.”
I’m super-lucky. I like my relatives. My Mom’s a hoot. My Dad is a great conversationalist. I look forward to spending time with them.
But I also like my chosen family. The Meyers are wonderful. My friends are wonderful. Not a bad one in the bunch. (If they were, they wouldn’t be my friends – but that’s certainly not true for everyone, as Lord knows a lot of people hate their families and then choose friends who are just as much trouble as their relatives.)
This isn’t bragging; it’s gratitude. I didn’t choose my Mother, or my Father, or my Uncle Tommy, or Grampa and Gramma and Grammy. I just got them. And they, in turn, gave me one hell of a model as to how to build my life, so when I found someone as special as Gini I figured out how to keep her.
That’s luck. That’s what gratitude is for. You can be happy at the work you’ve put in – and Lord knows I’ve spent years massaging my psyche to be a better person – but the bedrock of almost any successful work is a layer of luck, and I had that.
Christmas seems a pretty appropriate time to celebrate that luck. And to thank all my friends, the ones with good families and the ones without. I miss you all terribly. I love you all deeply.
Thanks for being here.

A weird thing about women being systematically discouraged from male-dominated professions: the women who make it are sometimes encouraged to believe that they're special, which leads to some believing that the women who dropped out just didn't have enough gumption.